Anshel Pfeffer:
"There is no hope for the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Not as long as it is
joined at the hip to politics, and not as long as Israelis are unwilling to
liberate their Jewish heritage from the rabbis.

The post of chief
rabbi was born in sin − the last vestige of the Ottoman Empire’s rule of
Palestine that saw the Jews as a religious community and not a nation.

That sin was continued
when the dual roles of Sephardi and Ashkenazi rabbi were created, perpetuating
ethnic discrimination and compounding it with every additional power and
authority vested in the rabbinical establishment and courts that held in their
hands the fate of converts, engaged couples and agunot.

With Yosef and Lau,
the Chief Rabbinate will remain nepotistic, superfluous, gray, corrupt and
irrelevant to Israeli society, free to bully the people who need its services.

Until the people rise
up and demand that it be abolished, this is the rabbinate we deserve."

“Anybody
who is going to be in a position of an institutionalized party within Orthodoxy
is going to be very careful not to do anything too far-reaching that would lead
others to the right of him to raise questions about his own legitimacy,” Rabbi David Rosen
said.

Since Orthodoxy is the only game in town, the ability of any chief rabbi
to change the system “is greatly limited,” he asserted. Even if Stav had been
elected, he would have not brought any fundamental reforms — “certainly not
regarding religious pluralism or anything relating to Diaspora Judaism.”

Sure,
Stav had pledged to make the rabbinate more “user-friendly,” more accessible to
Israelis who are not Orthodox. That would have raised the institution’s
reputation at home and abroad, but the Orthodox monopoly over life cycle events
and issues of personal status would have persisted, Rosen claimed.

“Those
who want to see a radical change will probably argue that Rabbi Stav’s
appointment would be counterproductive because it would make the institution
look far more friendly than in fact it is,” he said.

"The
chief rabbinate is an atrophied body, corrupt to a large degree too," said
Yedidia Stern, professor at Bar-Ilan University Law School.

"But
personally speaking, as an Israeli citizen and a religious Jew, I hope it is
possible to rehabilitate the rabbinate. ... It can be part of our promise that
Israel will be both Jewish and democratic without compromising either. Headed
by the right person, it is an institution worth fighting for."

Rabbi
Uri Regev, head of Hiddush, had less kind words in response to the victory of
Lau and Yosef, both ultra-Orthodox candidates, which he said “shows an
unprecedented, low standing of this corrupt institution.”

A decade
ago, Shas and United Torah Judaism took revenge against the National Religious
Party for joining a coalition without haredi parties by taking away control of
the institution most dear to religious Zionists: the Chief Rabbinate.

Ten years
later, the haredim took revenge again for being left out of the government and
its coffers, but this time the victory is much sweeter.

The chief
rabbi elections, with all their skullduggery and plot twists, are surely of
interest to the media – which needs to churn out news – but should it really
interest you? Will the identity of the two rabbis elected today have any effect
on the lives of Israelis and Jews around the world?

Secular
Israeli Jews do not need another cadre of rabbis (male or female) seeking their
own share of attention and other goodies.

If getting along with the center of
the Israeli Jewish spectrum is prominent in the goals of religious but
non-Orthodox Jews from overseas and Israel, the way is not by clamoring for
equality or a larger share of the Western Wall, rabbinical rights to wed or
divorce the faithful, and along way accusing us of being undemocratic and other
nasty things.

It is time to throw
out the whole Rabbinate. This symbolic position represents more than its own
corruption. It is a constant reminder that Jews in Israel lack the religious
choices that Jews abroad enjoy. It reminds Israelis that there is only one
recognized way to marry and divorce because there is only one recognized way to
be Jewish.

The answer
is simple: Israel must stop giving rabbis, any rabbis [haredi, modern Orthodox
or non- Orthodox], monopolistic or coercive authority. A rabbi’s authority and
respect must come from the community that has chosen to accept him or her as
their spiritual leader.

I am by no means suggesting that Israel adopt the
American model of complete separation of religion and state; Israel should be
able to provide financial support for religious services in the same manner
that cultural initiatives and sports are subsidized. But rabbis’ authority must
come from their own voluntary communities and not be imposed by the state.

As
mentioned, no political leader has dared violate the status quo, and most of
the public views the Chief Rabbinate as a nuisance that has to be bypassed
whenever possible. The image of the Rabbinate and of the establishment it heads
has become so tarnished, that lately it appeared the time was nearing when
everyone would realize it must be dismantled.

We will
continue to be prisoners of the Chief Rabbinate on issues that should be our
own private domain. An “accessible and pleasant institution” does not impose
laws and customs on the entire community. True reform would enable all citizens
of Israel to live their lives according to their faith – even secular Jews. And
secularism is a system of belief no less profound than Judaism is.

How did
the secular majority became a persecuted minority controlled by the religious
establishment?

Stav says that it is
for this reason that he is opposed to recognizing marriage and conversion of
non-Orthodox denominations out of the fear that Jews in Israel will be split
into different factions, some of which would be seen as non-Jewish by others,
leading to profound and irrevocable societal division.

“If there won’t be one
institute to be responsible for marriage and divorce and conversion, it will
lead to a complete division and the tearing up [of] the Jewish society into
pieces,” says Stav.

Outside of the issue
of marriage and conversion, the rabbi says he is not necessarily opposed to the
provision of state funds to non-Orthodox rabbis and denominations, although he
is clearly not enthused by the idea.

“State funding of non-
Orthodox rabbis is a question of government, because it is part of its
relationship with its citizens. If this is what the government decides, then
okay,” he says ambivalently.

Part of
the Haredi, along with the Haredi-Leumi, leaders really think that only their
reading of Orthodox Halakha is correct. They really are terrified that any change
to the system, even a cosmetic change, will lead to the destruction of the
Torah. Part of that fear is based on an ill-defined fata morgana that
they call ‘Reform.’

The chief Rabbinate
and religious Zionism have a long history of maintaining that a Jewish state
must be committed to protecting the rights of its non-Jewish citizens. A
full restoration of the Chief Rabbinate to the Religious Zionist camp would
result in the election of a candidate whose vision includes the humanistic
tolerant values of its founders.

The right of "Jewish
self-determination" is not the right of one Jew to determine for another
what Judaism is, but the right to an open, public and unending debate. The chief
rabbinate in this piece of land, I should add, was originally an invention of
the Ottomans for managing the local Jews. It is a vestige of subjugation.

There's only one good
candidate for chief rabbi, even if none of the 150 electors will make this
choice: No one.

Is it
possible - until that larger debate is resolved - for the Chief Rabbi to belong
to a particular stream of Judaism and yet be admired and respected by a wide
swath of the Jewish world?

Is it possible for us to view the Chief Rabbi as an
exemplary representative of Judaism even if he does not represent our brand of
it?

Is it possible in a sovereign Jewish state to reimagine the role of Chief
Rabbi in which a figure of faith, by force of personality, intellect and sheer
greatness, plays a role in nurturing a Jewish public space that transcends the
divides in the Jewish world?

Realistically,
campaign promises aside, couples who are denied marriage for real halachic
reasons will continue to be denied. And there is no use promising easy
conversion when converts whose conversions are not accepted in the
modern-Orthodox world are a no-brainer, so that beyond promoting the religious
Zionist conversion courts of Rabbi Haim Druckman, already recognized by
religious Zionists, there is no revolution on the horizon.

As far as
the secular people are concerned, the Chief Rabbinate only meddles in their
lives when it comes to marriage and divorce. So why do you really care if the
rabbi that marries you is a nationalist? Do any of you actually check up on the
political leanings of the rabbi that performs your marriage or grants your
divorce?

What has
been going on is nothing short of a disgrace. If there ever was a public
institution which has become totally discredited in the eyes of the people it
is meant to serve, it is surely the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.

Many are rightly
asking: if this the depth to which this institution has sunk, is it perhaps
time to seek an alternative mechanism by which religion can be organized in the
State of Israel?

Had Rabbi
Kook’s model of the rabbinate come into being, Israeli society and world
Judaism would have been dramatically transformed. Unfortunately, that did not
happen. Recognizing this is the first step toward fixing this sorry state of
affairs. We hope that at least a modest step will be taken toward such a tikkun
olam by the two newly elected chief rabbis.

Religion and politics are
never far apart in the Promised Land, but a new intra-religious civil war with
a characteristically Israeli mix of high-octane ideology and gutter-level
politicking has lately been grabbing the headlines. Unseemly as the whole thing
is, the conflict has at least one virtue: It is laying some fundamental
questions of commitment and doctrine squarely on the table.

Ne'emanei
Torah Va'Avodah’s petition sought to stop what the movement refers to as
"the lawlessness in giving out rabbinical ordination certificates in
general and city rabbi certificates in particular."

According
to the petitioners, it has been revealed that hundreds of rabbis – many of them
relatives or associates of Chief Rabbinate officials – received their
rabbinical certificates in a shortened procedure, without taking any exams at
all, and sometimes through short oral exams which have produced an almost 100%
success rate.